Bronze Age Treasure Found in Dawlish by Detectorists 

Rick Purnell Press Officer writes...........

Teignmouth Probus Club invited Tom Cadbury, a Curator of Archaeology with the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, to tell them about an unusual and exciting find of 3000 year old buried Bronze Age treasure found by two local metal detectorists, Andy Wareham and David Scott in a boggy field near Dawlish in 2017 known as ‘the Dawlish Hoard’. This consisted of four gold bracelets, eleven fragments of bronze ingot, two small tin nuggets, two fragments of an axe and a section of a bronze sword.

On the initial discovery, the detectorists informed the local branch of the Portable Antiquities Scheme – a national scheme which liaises with detectorists and archaeologists – and the site was carefully excavated and examined.

The hoard was an unexpected find, as there is relatively little evidence of Bronze Age settlements in this area, apart from some Bronze Age burial mounds a few fields away. The reason the hoard was buried all that time ago is unclear, but it has been surmised that it was possibly buried in a pool - the ground is boggy today – as a gift to the Gods, as pools were believed to be ‘gateways’ to another world. Certainly, the presence of the gold bracelets points to the original owner being of high status.

The sign of a broken piece of sword was maybe, to stop any finder from taking over the power of the original owner, whose wealth was also shown by the fragments of bronze ingots and the tin nuggets, which would have been highly prized at the time.

Helped by public subscription, the £12,000 value was raised for the Royal Albert Memorial Museum to purchase a piece of local history and is now proudly on display. (www.https://rammuseum.org.uk/news/the-dawlish-hoard-goes-on-display/ for more information).

The interest in the subject to the members of the club was shown in the many questions which came from the audience at the conclusion of the talk, which was followed by a vote of thanks proposed by member, Peter Lewis

The subject of our next speaker will be about “Devon Magistrates”